Putin instructed to strengthen security at the Zaporozhye NPP

VLADIVOSTOK, 7 Sep — PRIME. Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had instructed Rosatom to submit additional proposals to strengthen the safety of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant – where the main danger is not reactors, but spent nuclear fuel storage facilities.

“Yesterday I asked the head of Rosatom (Aleksey) Likhachev to have Rosatom submit additional proposals to ensure security (ZaES). Because the main threat there is not reactors, but spent fuel storage facilities,” Putin said at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

On Tuesday, IAEA representatives published a report on the work of the delegation at the Zaporozhye NPP. Among other things, the organization recorded damage to a special unit for storing radioactive waste and fresh nuclear fuel. Agency officials called for an end to the shelling of the station and its environs, as this could damage critical equipment and release radioactive materials in an unrestricted manner. In connection with the security threat, it is proposed to create a nuclear safety zone around the nuclear power plant.

Russia accuses Ukrainian troops of systematic shelling of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and regrets that the IAEA did not indicate the source of the fire in its report on the results of a trip to the plant. The Russian side convened a meeting of the UN Security Council following the visit of an international agency mission to the station. The IAEA had the opportunity to make sure that the military of Kyiv poses the only threat to the Zaporizhzhya NPP, there is no internal threat to the plant, Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s permanent representative to the organization, said at a meeting of the UN Security Council.

On August 16, the FSB of Russia reported that on August 4, 9 and 12, in the Kurchatov district of the Kursk region, Ukrainian sabotage groups blew up six towers of high-voltage power lines (110, 330 and 750 kV), through which the Kursk NPP supplies power to industrial, transport, life support facilities, social infrastructure and the population of both the region and neighboring subjects of the Russian Federation. They are looking for saboteurs and their possible accomplices, the security of nuclear power facilities has been strengthened. The Kursk nuclear power plant returned to its planned operation after these acts of sabotage, the operator of all nuclear power plants in Russia, the Rosenergoatom concern, later said.

The WEF takes place on September 5-8 on the campus of the Far Eastern Federal University on Russky Island in Vladivostok. RIA Novosti acts as the general media partner of the forum.